True Devotion to Mary Magdalene
True Devotion to Mary Magdalene
The House of New Bethany
Read The House of New Bethany: Holy Devotion to St. Mary Magdalene for more on devotion to Mary Magdalene through Mystical France. Read synopses of the characters and their stories in The House of New Bethany.
Mystical France in the center of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
True devotion to St. Mary Magdalene is an expression of true devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is an alethic region in Our Lady’s kingdom, a gift of being in the world. Through a prayerful, sacramental life of interpreting the gift of Magdalene’s being in the world, we fulfill our slavery to the Virgin Mary. We bring the Father’s Kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven” as Mystical France through Magdalene’s contrite, repentant contemplation in Provence. Receiving one's relationship to Mary Magdalene for the renaissance of Catholic France and the glory of Jesus and Mary requires a lifetime of true devotion.
True devotion to Mary Magdalene is alethic. Its mode is a refulgence of grace, emerging from our living in the world of Catholic faith. Alethic truth presents itself as emergence, as unconcealment in our world. Both alethic and metaphysical understandings are representations of what is true. For example, when the sun rises over a magnificent panoramic meadow, we know the laws of science at work and the metaphysics of substances governing the sun, earth, and humans. We observe how each object corresponds to its metaphysical substance across this display and know, therefore, that what we see represents the permanence of metaphysical truth. However, we also sense the emergence of God calling us to himself through the sunrise over the meadow. More than majestic natural beauty, the scene before us heralds the glory of God and his love for us. The latter gives itself to us as emerging Aletheia in the world, and as no less true than the metaphysical truth of correspondence to substance. True devotion to Mary Magdalene is a brilliant, alethic herald for the kingdom of God and is no less true than the metaphysics of correspondence confirming our faith.
True devotion to Mary Magdalene exists, and we must embrace it as the Holy Spirit gives it through the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Our Lady opens the region of Mystical France to us in her heart through the mystical gestalt of Mary Magdalene on the shores of Provence. We receive it without objectifying. Through Magdalene, we experience Mystical France in the center of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
True devotion to Mary Magdalene exists and is under Our Lady’s mantle because:
Its fruits are the love of God and increasing devotion to our baptismal vows, the sacraments, daily Mass, first Friday and first Saturday reparation, poverty of spirit, contrition, repentance, and turning away from the world.
It opens the soul to the gift of being in imitation of Christ.
It is inceptual and alethic, imitating Magdalene at the feet of Jesus, who could see the glory of the Son of God shimmering through his humanity.
Prayer to St. Mary Magdalene
St. Mary Magdalene, I submit to you as my apostle, my teacher, and the one chosen to form my sanctity through Mystical France. I do this as a reflection of my slavery to the Virgin Mary and under her mantle.
I ask that you intercede for me as my sister, mentor, and founder of the royal line of the House of New Bethany. I ask that the gleaming aurora of the combined hearts of St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse of Lisieux permanently seal itself around my heart for the glory of God and the Virgin Mary.
Dear Magdalene, teach me repentance and contrition through the proper prayer life, penitence, fasting, and the corporal and spiritual acts of mercy. Keep me close to the sacraments and adoration of our beloved Jesus in the Eucharist.
Amen.
The Rule of the Combined Hearts of St. Joan and St. Thérèse
“All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea doth not overflow; unto the place from where the rivers come, they return to flow again.” Ecclesiastes 1:7 (Douay-Rheims).
The combined hearts of St. Joan and St. Thérèse are the river of grace by which the Holy Spirit fills our hearts. The boundary of the river is the syntax of Magdalene’s inceptual, alethic intellect.
The river of grace flows and returns in a perpetual hermeneutic. Grace draws us and returns to us, only to draw us further toward the horizon of Mystical France. It is an ebb and flow following Magdalene’s inceptual light.
The rule of the combined hearts: the gentle ebb and flow along Magdalene’s lighted pathway through the pure dark night of grace as slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
The mode of the combined hearts: perpetual receiving and giving, mystically ascending Magdalene’s massif of La Sainte-Baume in the Var Forest of Provence like St. John of the Cross’ ascent of Mount Carmel and Dark Night of the Soul in the Holy Lands.
The French Catholic Diaspora
To bring out what hides in us.
“For there is nothing hid, which shall not be made manifest: neither was it made secret, but that it may come abroad.” Mark 4:22 (Douay-Rheims).
The French Catholic Diaspora emerges as alethic Being in our hearts on our journey with St. Joan and St. Thérèse to Mystical France, our life’s vocation.
Through docility and perspicacity, we bring forth what lies hidden in us. We enshrine our hearts in the shimmering hues of the combined hearts and allow their hearts to seal themselves around our hearts.
The Alabaster Light
Magdalene’s alabaster jar represents the light of Aletheia, an unconcealment. Our Lady opens the alethic region of her heart to us as Magdalene’s inceptual light. This light forms the boundaries of our path with the combined hearts of St. Joan and St. Thérèse through the pure night of faith which does not objectify. It draws us as already being in it. The lamp posts of Magdalene's inceptual light guide us through the night of faith towards the kingdom on the horizon.
Repentance, contrition, and alethic wonder allow Magdalene to see Jesus “emerge in self-concealment” at his feet and the foot of the cross.
Magdalene’s alethic charism is “alabaster light,” the light emerging from “choosing the best part.”
The alabaster light emerges from abandonment to the divine will.
True devotion to Mary Magdalene is Our Lady’s humble desire for our hiddenness, hiddenness in the unsaid behind the alethic light of Magdalene’s alabaster jar.
The essence of this light is hiddenness. Until his public ministry, Our Lord remained hidden. Humility hid Our Lady. Magdalene hid in a grotto. Until entering the public stage, Joan remained hidden in Domrémy and her sanctity remained hidden for a quarter of a century. At Lisieux's Carmel, Thérèse remained hidden behind its walls.
The alabaster light of Mystical France is to be hidden in God.
Bethany: a place of friendship and rest for Jesus
Bethany: a place where Jesus can retire from the world with unconditional love, free from the chatter of this world. This is what Our Lord intended for France, through Magdalene’s inceptual light, to be a new house of Bethany as the Eldest Daughter of the Church.
First, one must be dedicated to one’s country, then to France and its sacred traditions through St. Mary Magdalene, St. Joan of Arc, and St. Thérèse of Lisieux.
Grounded in the sacraments, true devotion, and slavery to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The Divine Glance
The divine glance. It is an unreflective certainty, an experience of being that cannot be objectified. Its pursuit is endless; it finds only what remains hidden.
Where have you hidden, Beloved, and left me moaning?
You fled like the stag after wounding me;
I went out calling you, but you were gone.
~ The opening to the Spiritual Canticle of St. John of the Cross
In my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, and found him not. I will rise, and will go about the city: in the streets and the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, and I found him not. The watchmen who keep the city, found me: Have you seen him, whom my soul loveth? When I had a little passed by them, I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him: and I will not let him go, till I bring him into my mother's house, and into the chamber of her that bore me. I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes and the harts of the fields, that you stir not up, nor awake my beloved, till she please.
~ Canticle of Canticles 3: 1-5.
This is true devotion to St. Mary Magdalene.
